


That Thing You Do

by executrix



Category: Mad Men, Playboy Club
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-14
Updated: 2011-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another one of those damn “Mad Men meet The Reduced Some Like It Hot Company at the Playboy Club” fics…</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Thing You Do

**Author's Note:**

> The title refers to the Tom Hanks film about the early days of rock’n’roll. Sure it does.
> 
> Thanks to imkalena for suggesting cigars to resolve a plot problem.

1.  
Sean Beasley lifted the gaudy paperback (the yellowed cellophane on the cover crackled a little) and handed it to Nick Dalton.

“Hey, buddy, I haven’t read anything except the _Trib_ since law school,” Nick said. “Come to think of it, I didn’t read much then either. I just gave one of the guys in my study group five smackers for his notes before exams.”

“Well, it’s called ‘Red Harvest,’” Sean began.

“That’s all I need, Beezey,” Nick said. “Getting tagged as a Red. I get enough of that just for that court case for those Negroes.”

“It’s not that kind of Red,” Sean said. “It’s…it’s about the Continental Op. He’s a private eye. And a town called Personville, except they pronounced it Poisonville.”

“Sounds like Chicago already,” Nick said.

“My point, my point is, that the town had some problems with a **criminal element**. And what the Op did, was convince the various factions that the problem had been caused by the other factions. And then they cleaned up the town by knocking each other off.”

2.  
Don Draper got out of the cab, held the door open for Peggy, and walked around to the trunk of the cab. He retrieved Peggy’s suitcase and his own case. He wondered briefly, as Lane paid the cab driver, if it would be discourteous to grab Lane’s suitcase, or if Lane would get angry at being reminded that he wasn’t a young buck any more. But if Don did collect the suitcase, how would he hold it?

Lane cut the Gordian knot by walking to the back of the cab and seizing his own case, of ancient but once-expensive calf. Don and Peggy were constrained to carry Samsonite luggage (his, gray; hers, flamingo pink). Fortunately, it was pretty decent luggage. Don didn’t think Crest was any worse than other toothpastes. But Sterling Cooper had once had a client who manufactured breakfast cereal so vile that the entire Draper family had spent a year eating daily matutinal fried eggs. Carla’s apparently boundless equanimity was dented by having to keep cooking them.

The second cab, bearing Roger Sterling and Pete Campbell, drew up in front of the Palmer House. Roger never carried anything except an attaché case with a clean shirt and tie when he traveled; he had the hotel press his suit every night. Pete brought along an extra suit, a camera, and a set of golf clothes in case anyone invited him to play a round.

Don tensed up, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Pete, leaving his luggage in the taxi’s trunk, looked at the hotel doorway, looked down at the well-packed two inches of snow beneath his penny loafers, spread his arms, and twirled around. “Chicago! Chicago!” he chanted tunelessly. “You toddlin’ town…”

Don exhaled. The worst had happened.

“Everyone, get some rest. We’ll meet at seven for breakfast and go over the presentation,” Roger said.

Pete’s face fell. “But…but…I arranged something special for us tonight,” he said. “I got on the list for the Playboy Club.”

“All right, kiddies, go have fun,” Roger said. “But you’d better be on time, shoes shined, and ready to work.”

“You won’t be joining us, sir?” he said plaintively. Peggy thought he sounded like Oliver Twist.

“I’m a married man, Pete,” Roger said. “I’ve actually seen women’s legs before. Possibly even a breast, if I’m not too senile to remember.”

“Well, I’m sure **you’ll** want to have an evening out, Peggy,” Pete said. “You brought a cocktail dress, didn’t you? I mean, you have to be properly dressed. It’s the Playboy Club.”

“Unless you’re one of those bunny girls,” Lane said. He looked quite pleased at the thought.

3.  
“We gotta find that girl,” John Bianchi said. “Take her someplace quiet and have a talk with her. She must know what happened to my father.”

Nick Dalton shook his head. “John-o, you’re just not looking at it the right way up. What does some girl in a nightclub know about what happened to your father?”

“She was the last one to see him alive,” John said, lighting a Lucky Strike with a gold Zippo. “And last time I talked to her, she was holding out on me. I could tell.”

“Everybody in Chicago knows who you are. Knows who your father is.”

“’Is’? Nick, if he was alive, he wouldn’t just…vanish. In our thing, ‘just vanish’ means dead.”

“I hope you’re wrong, John. But it’s obvious why she didn’t open up to you. She has respect for your family. For your mother. You know and I know what must have happened. She must have taken him into the back room, gave him a blowjob, he maybe stuck a twenty in her stocking top. But she can’t tell **you** that because you’re his son, and you love your father. And she can’t tell anybody else, because the girls aren’t even allowed to date the keyholders, much less turn tricks right in the club.”

John shook his head and smashed the cigarette out in a first degree assault-weight glass ashtray. “I got a feeling about this. I know that girl is mixed up in it somehow.”

Nick took a deep breath. “John, you have to focus. Until your father comes back—and, maybe you’re right, and he’s not coming back—then you’re in charge. You have to keep the business going. You have to be strong. You can’t let anybody think that there’s a power vacuum.”

John looked puzzled. Nick realized that John was probably thinking about an Electrolux. Nick charged on. “My guys keeping tabs on the waterfront say that the Giovanellis want a piece of the longshore unions. Everybody knows that the Andolino family wants more of the whorehouse action. And, who knows? Maybe some of the Negro gangs want to make a move on the hop racket, or even the goofballs. And there’s auto theft, jukeboxes, cigarette smuggling…”

“Maybe you’re right,” John said reluctantly.

“Of course I’m right. I gotta go to the club, Carol-Lynne’s set is starting soon.”

4.  
After a struggle with the cold, zombie-like clasp of her rubber girdle, and the obdurate zipper of her dress, Peggy pushed her feet into her evening shoes and went to the lobby to meet Don, Pete, and Lane.

When they got to the club, Peggy looked around, mildly curious. A thin, pretty woman on the bandstand sang “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Her sparkly black dress that reminded Peggy of the one she bought her niece Big Kathleen (…she had two nieces of that ilk…)’s Barbie doll for Christmas.

Don pulled out a chair for her, and she sat down. Peggy glanced over at Don’s menu. “There aren’t any prices on your menu either,” she said.

“That’s because everything’s $1.50,” Pete said.

Because Peggy was the only woman at the table, the pretty Negro girl in the emerald-green suit, who said she was their Cocktail Bunny, looked at her expectantly. Peggy said, “I’ll have a rye and ginger ale.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Peggy, this isn’t some…some…shot-and-beer **tavern** in…Gowanus,” Pete said.

“If you like ginger ale, we have a wonderful ginger beer that a little man in Hunkytown makes for us,” Brenda said. “Would you like a Moscow Mule? We have the darlingest copper mugs.”

Peggy shrugged, then nodded.

“That sounds splendid!” Lane said. “I shall have one of those too!”

At the sound of his cute accent, Brenda’s professional smile became real. He looked into her eyes and smiled too. Don had a scotch on the rocks, Pete ordered an extra-dry martini and ordered Brenda to keep them coming. “When the cat’s away…” he said, and Lane nodded conspiratorially.

The woman on the bandstand sang “All the Things You Are” and then “Pennies from Heaven.” Don danced with her once, then their steaks arrived. Nobody else asked Peggy to dance, not that any of the men were particularly handsome, and what good would it to do meet a guy who lived in Chicago anyway?

The singer left the bandstand. They all had coffee, and Peggy had some apple pie a la mode—why not, if her zippers wouldn’t zip anyway, and she could definitely use an alternative explanation to the Worst having Happened?

Peggy was going to go to the Ladies’ Room to freshen up her makeup. But she decided that, boring as it was to spend the evening in a hotel room watching TV, it was more fun than sitting here watching men ogle girls in bathing suits. At least on the beach the girls could be comfortably barefoot, not teetering on spike heels, and they didn’t have to have stupid cotton tails stuck to their behinds.

Peggy stood up. “I’ll get my wrap,” she said. “I’m heading back to the hotel to do some work.”

“Hey, don’t go!” Pete said. “It’s just heating up! Look, the combo is setting up. Hear some real music, not that Broadway crap my parents listen to.”

Peggy looked for Don—maybe he’d walk her back to the hotel, it was a nice night even though it was cold—or they could share a cab. But she didn’t see him, so she went back alone.

A redhead carrying a tray of cigarettes came over to the table. “Hi!” she said. “I’m Alice, your cigarette bunny!” She posed, her hip thrust out to balance the tray. “Would you care for some smokes?”

“Those are cigarettes,” Pete said belligerently. Lane sighed, hoping Pete wasn’t going to launch into a Draper-style catechism of the Help about their tobacco preferences. “Don’t you have cigars?”

“Certainly, sir,” Alice said. “We have some excellent Corona-Coronas, as well as Robustos and Toros, Cohibas, and Macanudos. I’ll bring you a selection from our climate controlled humidor.” She kept the smile on her face, but, although she didn’t believe in ghosts, she wasn’t thrilled about having to go to the storeroom.

She returned, the tray arranged as she had been trained, and waited for Pete’s approval. He picked up a cigar, swept it under his nose, took off the band, and was about to clip it and take the light that Alice proffered. Then he threw the cigar down on the tray.

“Wait!” he said. “This isn’t authentic Cuban, is it?”

“No, sir,” Alice said. “We’re not allowed…but these are very fine imported Venezuelan cigars from the prime estates.” She caught Nick’s eye across the room, semaphoring “Help!”.

“I bet Hef has real Cuban cigars at the Mansion,” Pete said. “Why can’t I have one?”

Nick came over, priding himself on his well-honed drunk-wrangling skills. “Let’s keep it down, all right, my friend?”

“I’m not your friend! And I don’t want this crap, I want a Cuban! Anyway, this isn’t a real party! They should have invited us to the Mansion!”

Nick called over the Diner’s Club Card Bunny. “Rochelle, cancel the account for this party. Mr…”

“Campbell,” Lane said.

“Campbell, you’re comped for this evening. But you’ll have to leave now, and you will not be welcome in any Playboy Club anywhere.”

“You can’t do that to me!” Pete said, swinging his fist and, somewhat to his surprise, connecting with Nick’s jaw. The momentum carried him forward and onto his face. Brenda knelt down next to him. “C’mon, honey,” she said. “Time to go home. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Pete pushed her away. “I say!” Lane said. “You can’t hit a woman!”

“Your friend’s right,” Nick snarled, hauling Pete upright.

“Wanna take this outside?” Pete said.

“Yeah!” Nick said, thinking for only a split second that adrenaline had better be enough to keep him warm in a snow-slicked Chicago alley.

Usually, the Club was a little sanctuary, where the inconvenience of not being able to settle a score or dispute the boundaries of the South Side punchboard concession was balanced by the convenience of not getting shanked with one’s own steak knife. Tonight, however, a Bonfiglio soldier happened to catch sight of a Bianchi guy who he suspected was the one who got his sister in trouble. He went over and cracked a bottle of Montepulciano over his head, which was not taken in good spirit by the other three Bianchi guys at the table.

5.  
Nick received potent ammunition for his belief that God protects children, idiots, and drunks. He was unsure whether that Campbell guy slipped on an icy patch, or just zoned out, but Nick was flat on his ass, freezing, with one ear and a handful of hair clasped in Pete’s hands, preparatory to having his head pounded into the pavement.

Nick struggled, failing to achieve solid purchase for his knee. He tried shoving his hands through Pete’s elbows, wondering if all that would achieve would be getting his ear torn off.

Deliverance arrived, although in unwelcome form. There was the tweet of a police whistle, and the glare of a flashlight that, in all probability, would have landed on the heads of both of the guys in the alley, particularly if they had been somewhat less Caucasian. But when the cops saw who it was underneath Pete, they offered Nick a hand up and accepted ten bucks apiece to buy a new hat.

They cuffed Pete (in both senses of the term), threw him into the back of the black-and-white, and proceeded into the club to investigate the report of a riot. Nick tried to convince them that everything was under control, but even all of the cash in his pocket wasn’t enough to fade the heat.

6.  
“Come on!” Lane urged, putting her tray of drinks down on a table and clasping Brenda’s hand, moving her away from the chaos exploding all around them. He found an open door, pulled Brenda into the broom closet with him, and shut the door.

7.  
Alice rushed through the club, desperately looking for Maureen. “Maureen, you’ve got to get out of here!” she said, when she found Maureen in the dressing room refreshing her lipstick and hairspray.

“But Alice, I’m on till midnight,” Maureen said.

“Yeah, well, World War Three started out on the floor,” Alice said. “C’mon, we’ll get dressed really fast and slip out the back door before any of the Mob guys see us.”

8.  
Sean and Gary were listening to the LP of “Paint Your Wagon” and necking on the couch when the door opened.

“Oh, my God!” Sean said. “It’s my wife.”

“So what?” Gary said. “I mean, she’s the friggin’ Secretary of the Mattachine Society, of course she knows the score.”

“No, I mean, she’s supposed to be working. If she’s here, something must be wrong.” He zipped his fly, buckled his belt, and rushed to Alice’s side. “What is it, honey? Is it your Dad?...oh, hi, Maureen. You look upset. What seems to be the problem?”

9.  
When the phone rang, Peggy froze, her seventh Frango Mint halfway to her mouth. She put down the bitten mint patty and her copy of “Life” magazine and picked up the phone. There seemed to be something scratching on the line, but she couldn’t make out any words.

“Hello? Hello?” she said, preparing to slam down the phone. At least when she was a kid and used to make prank calls she bothered to ask if the bathtub was running or they had Prince Albert in a can.

“Oh, thank God, you’re there, Peggy,” came an urgent whisper that, as it lengthened to a whine, she identified as Pete Campbell. “Listen, you’ve got to come and bail me out. And you can’t tell any of the others. No one must ever find out about this.”

“You WHAT?” Peggy said, writing down the address of the police station on the little pad next to the phone. Then, recalling from reading spy stories that They (whoever They were) could find out information by shading in the message with a pencil, she put the whole pad in her pocketbook. She was grateful that at least she hadn’t put on her night cream.

Peggy’s mom always made her keep a $20 bill in the zippered pocket of her pocketbook, so that she could escape Fates Worse Than Death via taxicab. Although she disputed most of the premises behind this argument, Peggy was glad that the old habit died hard. As she surmised, once the desk sergeant was informed that Public Enemy Number Campbell was about to make Chicago a safer place by his departure, he was willing to develop $20 worth of amnesia. When they left the police station, Peggy said that he was going to have to pay for the cab back to the hotel, she was now flat broke and didn’t think she could put it in as petty cash. He paid for the cab but made no move toward reimbursing the $20.

It was wrong, Peggy knew it was, but he still looked beautiful to her in the creamy light of the sconces in the hallway. He put his hand on her shoulder. His suit was crumpled and dirty and his lip was cut and there was a dark red mark on one cheekbone and he was probably going to have a black eye on the other side.

“You’re such a great girl, Peggy,” he said. “Why didn’t somebody ever marry you?”

Peggy stabbed the key into the lock for her room’s door and gave it a garroting wrench. “Goodnight, Pete,” she said. “I’ve done enough for you for one night. You’re going to have to come up with your own explanation for Mr. Sterling tomorrow.”

As the door slammed, Pete wailed, “But Peggy! I’m Accounts! **You’re** Creative!”

10.  
“Crap,” Nick said, scratching the lock as he scrabbled to fit in the key. It had been a hell of a night, and one that seemed would never end. Once he got back to the Club (not that he ever wanted to see it again) he was going to rip Billy a new one for committing the unforgivable sin of calling the cops. Then Billy would have to go to the Mansion, where Hef would rip him an even bigger new one. The Playboy Club was a special place, a fantasy realm where men came to relax from the manifold inconveniences of ordinary life.

At least Nick was seconds away from his very own personal haven, where he would get the sympathy he so deeply craved, and where Carol-Lynne would look in her address book and find the address of that place to get his suit re-woven.

When Carol-Lynne’s door finally yielded, everything was just the way Nick liked it in the morning. The smells of fresh-perked coffee and crisp bacon. A mellow Sinatra side on the Capehart. Carol-Lynne moving quickly yet serenely through the kitchen, in nothing but her stiletto heels and a white-on-white shirt.

It was not, however, Nick’s shirt.

“Good morning, Dalton,” Donald Draper said, sketching a small wave from behind the newspaper. His hand went back, there was a crunch of toast, but the newspaper didn’t budge.

11.  
After an unpromising start (Roger was furious that Don was late for breakfast, and Pete, alternately claiming food poisoning and influenza, did not appear) the client meeting went quite well. Lane had to telephone Pete’s hotel room to get some figures.

The other members of the Sterling Cooper team enjoyed a bibulous lunch, then went to their rooms to pack for the airport as Peggy handled the formalities of checking out and paying the bill.

The light was blinking on the phone in Roger’s room. He picked it up and asked for the hotel operator. “You have a message from Mr. Pryce,” the operator said. “He said to tell you that he won’t be flying back to New York with you. He’s going to be taking the train. He says he’s taking two days’ holiday, whatever that means.”

12.  
“My friend wants to be a singer,” Alice confided to Abie, the booker for whose clients Sean provided publicity. He said it was like rolling a rock uphill in Hell forever.

“Can she sing? Never mind, with this rock n’roll crapola, who cares,” Abie said. He pressed the button on the intercom. “Raizell, look in the card index. Do we have a band that needs a girl singer?”

“I’m going along with her,” Alice said.

“You’re a singer too? I don’t know if anyone is going to need two singers…”

“No,” she said. “I play the saxophone.”

“I don’t see a saxophone. Do I see a saxophone? Maybe in your pocketbook you have a saxophone?”

“It’s…at home,” Alice said, reminding herself to stop off at the pawnshop down the street from Abie’s office, where the window had featured a saxophone. “I wanted to get all this sorted out first.”

The intercom blatted. “Mr. Goldschmidt? Nobody needs a girl singer. One of those rock bands, they need a boy singer, though.”

Abie shrugged. “Boys, girls, who can tell these days? Skinny and with the hair that’s too long for a boy and too short for a girl.”

13.  
Lane twisted the wires off the top of the champagne bottle. “You see, my dear, only very vulgar people think that it is a good idea to make a great deal of noise and froth when they open a champagne bottle. The more quietly and subtly it is performed, the less champagne is wasted.”

The liquor store hadn’t had any champagne glasses—and Lane was not terribly optimistic about the champagne—so he poured it carefully into the tooth glasses from the Pullman roomette.

“Here’s to getting to know you better,” he toasted.

Brenda raised her glass with a smile that sent Lane’s heart racketing and foaming. The train hit a bump, causing Brenda’s white leather jewel box with the gold-stamped top to bounce off the top of the sink.

“What’s that?” Lane asked. “You seemed very particular about fetching it.”

“It’s full of what makes girls beautiful,” Brenda said.

14.  
“Brylcream… a little dab’ll do ya,” Alice crooned.

“Please don’t sing,” Maureen said. Alice nodded. She had already washed the hairspray out of Maureen’s hair, trimmed it in the back, and popped her under the pneumatic plastic bonnet of Alice’s hair dryer. Now she rolled it into a pompadour and gummed it into place.

“Weird!” Maureen said. “I mean, it’s weird to see myself in the daytime without makeup too.”

“Anyway, you have to practice. Singing rock ‘n’roll, and…other things.” Alice flicked the lever on the record player, and one of the six stacked 45s crashed down. Johnnie Ray and the Four Lads sang “The Little White Cloud that Cried.”

“First of all, you have to look big,” Alice said. “Y’know, girls always want to look dainty? And a big girl is going to hooch down so she won’t look tall, or she’ll zip herself into a girdle so she won’t look big, and talk all whispery so she won’t be loud.”

“That’s just with men, women yell plenty when they’re with their kids. Anyway, that’s just to be like Marilyn!” Maureen said.

“That’s not just it, even though I sure wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers…” Alice said. Maureen was momentarily puzzled but went back to listening. “You’re a pretty short fella, **Morry** , and you have to make yourself be loud and maybe be the kind of guy we’d roll our eyes if he came into the club because he was such a pain in the a…neck.” She knelt to tie the shoelaces of the smallest pair of Army surplus boots she could find. “Here, try stomping around in these. It’s hard to walk in flats, I know, but that’ll just make you make more noise, and that’s good.”

She took another pair of socks out of the bag, and pantomimed rolling them up and pinning them into the fly of the jockey shorts. (Sean wore boxers, but Alice thought that the rock’n’roll lifestyle favored tighty-whiteys.) Then she handed over the gray flannels, once from the Brooks Brothers boys’ department, that she found at the St. Vincent DePaul store. Before Maureen put on the white shirt and skinny black tie, Alice showed her how to use an Ace bandage to convert a pretty girl into a short, sort of chubby guy.

“Hey, how do you know how to do this stuff?” Maureen asked.

“’Cause I’m a dyke,” Alice said. Maureen looked puzzled. “A lesbian.”

Maureen’s hand flew to her mouth, orangey-red nails vivid against her skin. (Alice reminded herself to get the nail clippers and polish remover.) “Oh, your poor husband! He’d be devastated if he ever knew!”

{{Did this girl just fall off the turnip truck, or what?}} Alice asked herself. “Oh, honey, it’s okay. I wouldn’t lie to Sean about anything important. He’s very….ummm…sophisticated. And understanding.” (Because, as Sean warned her, you never out anybody else, even or especially if you’re on the draft board and he turns up in a cocktail dress.)

15.  
“Darryl, Wally, Burt, this is Morry. He wants to be your new singer,” Abie said. “This is my nephew Schmuel, he plays the piano, you can hear that Morry is a real socko singer who will put you on the charts.”

Burt, the drummer, shrugged. “I don’t see us ever gettin’ on the charts, but we got a gig tonight and it’s a two-hour drive. Morry, if you can read a lead sheet and you don’t make my ears bleed, I bet you got a job.”

“Do you know the songs from ‘West Side Story’?” Maureen asked. Schmuel rolled his eyes. Next, the kid would be asking for “Melancholy Baby.”

“Okay! How about “I Feel…”

Alice kicked her in the ankle.

“’Maria!’ I feel like singing ‘Maria’!”

Maureen finished with a high note that had the boys clasping their testicles for reassurance.

Darryl said, “Okay, I guess.”

Wally, the bass guitarist, said, “Yeah, but can he rock?”

Schmuel played “Blueberry Hill.”

Burt stopped drumming on the top of the piano with a rolled-up newspaper and said, “What the h-e-double sticks. Better than not doing that gig tonight. I don’t want us to get a reputation, you know, for not being reliable.”

“I want to audition too,” Alice said, opening her saxophone case.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Darryl said. “This is a rockabilly BLUES band. Saxophones are for JAZZ bands. Jazz is for squares.”

“That’s not what they said at the Sheboygan Conservatory of Music,” Alice said.

“Okay, Morry, kiss your girl goodbye,” Burt said.

“But…but…I want Alice! Umm, I want Alice to come with me!” Maureen squeaked.

Darryl looked Alice up and down, until she had to remind herself not to sock him.“Conservatory, huh? Hey, you’re a real pretty girl,” he said. “If you don’t mind losin’ that la-dee-dah classical stuff, you could, like, stand up front and shake a tambourine. Shake your maracas, y’know? As long as you don’t mind showin’ a little skin.”

“Mister, I used to be a…” Alice began, (making a note to herself to take the saxophone back to the pawnshop). Then she remembered that the Mob was looking for a couple of Bunnies so nobody better put the idea of bunnyness in anybody’s mind. “Lifeguard,” she said. “Sittin’ around all summer up on that tower in a bathing suit. So, sure, I can show a little skin.”

“Alice is a dumb name,” Wally said. Alice was going to huff at him, but not only didn’t she really disagree, she thought a little anonymity would be a good idea. She was also going to insist on her paychecks being made out in a name that would allow her to cash them, but a glance implied strongly that this was a cash-only outfit. “Okay, my nom de guerre can be…Amber. Like the book.”

“Yeah,” Maureen said. “I don’t like being named Morry so much either. And all the Mods and the Rockers, they’re English! And they have books! So I want to be Lancelot!”

“Just wait a minute,” Wally said. “We ain’t gettin’ paid that much, and that’s for splitting four ways, not five. And if we got a girl, we gotta get her her own room.”

“I can sleep on the bus,” Alice said.

“Awww, that ain’t safe,” Wally said. “I don’t want nobody to get hurt, I just don’t wanna be broke.”

Maureen cleared her throat. She remembered vaguely something from Sunday School about Father Abraham’s travel arrangements. “Amber’s my girl,” she said. “We can share a room.”

“Yeah!” Alice said. “We…we’re Beats. We believe in Free Love.”

“Not that much free love,” Maureen said, noticing Darryl’s eyes lighting up. “I told you, she’s **my** girl.”

“You better be worth it, Lance,” Burt said.

“You heard the man,” the newly christened Lance said, pointing to Abie. “I’m the guy who’s gonna put you on the map.”

“Also, I can drive a bus,” Alice said. “I mean, you boys will have to do the heavy lifting, but I’ll be a real asset. Wait and see.”

16.  
Maureen took off her pants and shirt, rolled up her jockey shorts carefully to keep the socks pinned inside, and undid the binder with a sigh of relief. Alice watched happily, especially for the moment between the removal of Lance’s clothes and the frilled lilac baby-doll nightie dropping over Maureen’s head.

“You’re looking at me!” Maureen said. “Hey, you used to look at me all the time when we were at the Club. Was that because you’re a…you know? And you think I’m pretty?”

“Hubba hubba!” Alice said.

“And you think I’m, you know, sexy?”

Alice licked her lips.

“But what can two girls do, anyway?”

“I think this is going to be a **surprise** party,” Alice said.

17.  
“Wow,” Maureen said. “I mean, I sort of did that a lot for guys but they never did that for me, you know?”

“Sean says that’s one of our best marketing tools.”

“Except, I don’t want to be mean, but I liked kissing you—you feel so soft and you smell nice—but don’t know if I want to do **that** to you.”

Alice shook her head. “You don’t have to. I take care of my femme, show her a good time.” Maureen snuggled against her sleepily. Alice kissed the top of her head, lips lightly adhering to the Brylcream.

“Do you think we’ll have to keep doing this forever?” Maureen asked. “I don’t mean, umm, fooling around in bed together, I mean being in the band.”

“I thought you liked it! I mean, the guys are nice, and the audiences seem to like you, and we get to see different places.”

“Mostly what we get to see is places just like the one I ran away from. And I like being a Bunny. The Club is so sophisticated and fancy, and it’s fun to flirt with the guys and dance when there’s a smokin’ band or when we’re just in the dorm dancing to the radio with the other girls. Also, we’re practically not making any money doing this after we pay gas money and motel rooms and deep-dish pizza, and we made a lot of money at the Club.”

“Don’t I know it!” Alice said. “But we’re not doing this just so we can write a ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation’ theme for Sister Mary Ethelberta’s sophomore English class, we’re doing it because gangsters are chasing us.”

“Well, mostly they’re chasing me,” Maureen said. “But…you fixed this all up and you came along. You must like me, not just for, you know, sex, especially since you didn’t even know I’d do it with you.”

“I think you’re a great girl,” Alice said. They cuddled silently for a moment, then Maureen pushed back toward the headboard. “My brother was a football player in high school. Not even the quarterback, you know?”

“Tight end?” Alice demonstrated. “Runs in the family…”

Maureen, not to be distracted, said, “Linebacker. And even though the team wasn’t that good—never got past the quarter-finals in the CYO—he was still somebody for a while, you know? And now he goes around driving a truck delivering potato chips. He was on the JV, and then he made the team, and then it was all gone. And, and, it’s the same thing for pretty girl season. You hate it if you don’t make the team, and if you do, you know that the clock is running out until you graduate. And it’s shorter if you’re tired of school and want to quit and make some money. And there aren’t any time-outs. Does your Momma have a job?”

“No,” Alice said. “Ma worked in a War plant, but then when the kids started coming, my Pop said that she shouldn’t. Lots of times, she said that it drove her crazy being cooped up with us all day, and we were noisier than building fighter-bombers.”

“Well, when my Dad is laid off—which is pretty often, frankly—my Momma waits tables. She has this pink uniform, you know? I always feel funny when somebody gets a pink Bunny costume. Of course my Momma’s is all covered up, with the little white collar and a pin to stick on that says ‘Mary’. And she wears those white nurse’s shoes. And if she’s lucky, the four guys from the Rotary club might each leave a quarter next to the sugar shaker. Except, maybe just one of them will and the others figure, that’s her tip. It’s not that different from what we do, except, this one time, a guy at the Club gave me a twenty-dollar bill!”

“Me, too,” Alice said. “More than once.”

“And it’s different for you, because you’re married—oh, wait, and with being queer too—can I say that?”

“We do all the time,” Alice said, “So, I guess, yeah.”

“But before I have to start hanging up diapers and filling up those awful thick white coffee mugs, I want to have some fun. And I want to have some nice things. And I want somebody to take care of me. But why is it so hard? Sometimes I think that men hate you—or, anyway, they’re mad at you before you even open your mouth—if they don’t think you’re sexy. But it’s not smooth sailing if they do think you’re sexy, and anyway half of the guys at the Club look like wart hogs who went to Brooks Brothers anyway but they think they’re God’s gift. Because, if they think you’re sexy then they’re mad at you if you don’t go to bed with them. But if you do, maybe because they’re rich or you’re lonely or you think they’re handsome or smooth and they can take you great places, mostly they act like they’re mad at you too. Like they get to demand that you have sex with them, but it’s never as good as what they expected it to be. Or, it’s just great—I mean, I don’t think men are very picky about sex, they hardly seem to notice that one girl is any different from any other girl—but it doesn’t solve the problems in their lives and they’re still unhappy so they think it’s your fault.”

“I know,” Alice said. “That’s our **other** best marketing tool.”

18.  
A refined, highly machined noise—but a noise just the same—woke Alice. She bolted to the window, edged aside the window shade (it toppled onto her foot). What she really wanted to do was hide under the bed and cry (silently, in the hope that the representatives of Chicago’s gangland would just go away). However, doublet and hose must show itself courageous to petticoat, even if doublet and hose happens, by circumstance, to own a suitcase full of waist cinchers and horsehair crinoline.

What was definitely the first limousine ever to come to a halt at the motel’s carport purred to a stop in front of their cabin.

Alice scrambled into the first top and pair of pedal-pushers on top of her open suitcase, and nudged Maureen awake. “Get ready to run!” she said. Maureen rolled out of bed, put on her slippers, and started packing.

“Grab your purse…oh, wait…your wallet, get me my purse,” Alice said. “No time for that…Just put on some shoes, grab some money, and we’ll run for it.”

The chauffeur opened the limousine door. A honey-toned alligator pump, then another, emerged, followed by a fox coat and a box calf Kelly bag. (To those around her, though, it was just a big pocketbook.) Alice dropped the curtain. “Oh!” she said. “It’s only Frances.”

“Is Frances trying to kill us?” Maureen asked.

“No, she’s not. She’s…uhhh….she’s a friend of Sean’s. I, well, I dated her a couple of times and she wants me to be her girlfriend but that’s never going to happen. And she should just…give…. up.”

Alice gave her a peck on the cheek, which was so much less than what Frances had in mind that Frances drew back, her fox-clad arms crossed.

“How did you know we were here?”

“Well, the coast’s clear in Chicago,” Frances said. “I mean, it’s a war zone—a gang war zone—but the mobsters are too busy bumping each other off, as I believe the phrase is, to want to do the same to you. When I figured that out, I asked Sean where you were, and he sent me over to Abie’s. Come on, girls, I’ll give you a ride back to Chicago.”

“I’ve never been in a limousine!” Maureen said. “Well, except for my grampy’s funeral, and I wasn’t really in it, just behind it.”

“It’s nothing but a big car,” Alice said. “Practically a school bus, only not yellow. Anyway, we’ve got four more tour dates to play. We can catch a Greyhound after we finish the gig and get paid.”

Frances raised an eyebrow. “Maureen?”

Maureen shook her head. “First of all, Alice always stuck up for me, so I’m going to stick with her,” she said. “I mean, at the Club, mostly the girls like each other and help each other. Not a hundred percent, but my Ma said that you have to watch out for girls because they always stab you in the back, but that’s just bullpuckey. Of course my Dad was my Aunt Margery’s boyfriend first, she never comes for Thanksgiving, and I don’t know which one of them got the good deal, but…”

“Besides,” Alice said, “Even though we’re playing crappy taverns, and I guess mostly nobody’s listening, they really like you, Lance.”

“That’s true,” Maureen said, on the brink of explaining Lance to Maureen but deciding it didn’t matter. “I mean, it’s not because I’m a Bunny, because they don’t know that, they don’t even know I’m a girl. But they like Lance, they think he’s a good singer.”

19.  
“Is she a rich millionaire?” Maureen asked.

“She is a very rich millionaire,” Alice said. “Also, socially prominent. She’s on the Society page a lot. I mean, Sean wants her to marry Nick Dalton. If that happens it’d be all over the Rotogravure.” Alice stopped to think. “So, ummm, I guess it might be a problem if your girlfriend is married to your old boyfriend.”

“Nick Dalton was never my boyfriend!”

“OK, the guy you had a crush on, then.”

“But if you have an extra girlfriend, why do you want to give her to me? Why don’t you want to keep her?”

“I’m no pancake!” Alice said, beetling her brows.

“Huh?” Maureen said.

“I’m a butch! And when a butch meets an even butcher butch and flips for her and becomes her femme, that’s a pancake.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. Am I a—what did you say? A femme?”

“Trust me,” Alice said.

20.  
“I guess Abie told you where we were again,” Lance said.

Frances started to light her cigarette from a gold Cartier lighter, although everyone except Alice (who had to stop herself) produced some form of illumination. Frances bent down to Lance’s match (from a book inscribed “Halloran’s Tavern,” their latest gig), inhaled, and blew a smoke ring.

“We finished our tour dates,” Lance said. “Abie’s trying his best, but so far, mox nix.”

“Weelll,” Frances said, “I’m not without influence, you know. I’m sure I could pull some strings so that you and your little friends could…’wax a platter,’ as the saying goes.”

“Holy cow!” Wally said.

“I guess we could go, if the coast’s clear,” Alice said. “I miss…” she was going to say, “my husband” and “the Club” and “the other Bunnies” but obviously that wouldn’t work, so she said, “My dog Butter! He’s a…well, some of him is a beagle, anyway.”

Reminding herself not to say “ladies” or “girls,” Frances signaled to her driver to open the limousine door. “C’mon, kids. Let’s twenty-three skidoo.”

“Lance, I thought Alice was your girl—and I didn’t try to date her up because of that--but now you two are getting into a limousine with this dame?” Darryl said. “What gives?”

“Don’t cry, sugar,” Frances said, kissing him on the cheek. “No man is worth it.”


End file.
